Dear Olive

Skipping school was not an option the next day. My Nan needed to use her truck, so she decided that she would drop me off. The only problem was she couldn’t find her keys.

My Nan was my mother’s mother. She was the one who had taken care of me since I was six years old. She was a kind woman in her early seventies.

She was also losing her mind.

Her keys constantly went missing and she forgot to turn off the stove top. I was trying to get in the habit of checking it before I went to sleep so she didn’t burn us in our beds. It scared me a little to leave her alone all day.

There was no one to stay with her though. My parents were dead and she was my only family. I tried to help her as much as I could, but there was really nothing I could do about how forgetful she was becoming.

The keys eventually turned up. They were hiding in the freezer, behind the frozen pizza. My Nan laughed it off, but I could see the confusion in her eyes.
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“I don’t know how they ended up there,” She said quietly. Then she shrugged and urged me out the door. We were already about a half hour behind schedule.

My English teacher looked at me very strangely when I tried to explain my tardiness. She probably thought I was lying, but didn’t make any comment. She just frowned and told me to take a seat.

My usual seat was next to Olive. I avoided it and made my way to another empty chair. It was beside Mary Vorce.

She was a changed girl as well. You could tell by the symmetry of her face. Not one feature stuck out or disagreed with any of the others.

I remembered when she had a nose that had it’s own zip code. She had inherited that from her father along with a brash outspoken mouth. After she changed, I hadn’t heard her say more than two words.

She occasionally answered a question in class, but she never made smart ass comments like she used to. Maybe that was why the school embraced the change as part of education and adulthood.

Everyone who was reborn became focused, controlled, and attractive in the conventional sense of the word.

“It’s about both the mind and the body,” Principal Flick has said at a recent assembly. “You will become the most pure and refined version of your true selves. All of the imperfections and flaws of both your appearance and character will be a thing of the past.”

Being reborn was becoming the modern day equivalent of getting a car for your sixteenth birthday. No one longed for a shiny hunk of metal and exhaust fumes anymore. It was far more desirable to be perfect and new.

It was also extremely expensive. The clinics that performed the service charged an obscene amount of money. It only took a few days to perform though and was advertised as a weekend adjustment.

The slogan was, “Return to the best years of school as a whole new you!” It was everywhere and people were eating it up. They were all being brainwashed by the propaganda of perfection.

Everyone was being promised a bright and beautiful future for just a few thousand dollars. (Around 20,000)Well, they wasn't totally accurate. The cost of the change seemed to also include the persons soul.

I looked across the room at Olive. What a heavy price to pay. I hoped that for her it was worth it.

The teacher droned on about some book that I didn’t give two shits about. She was giving us the outline of the report we would have to write when my phone rang. That earned me another dirty look from her.

I quickly silenced it and returned it to my pocket. Whoever it was could wait until lunch. Olive looked back at me when she heard the noise.

Her green eyes met mine.

I wanted to get up. I wanted to go to her. I wanted to scream out, “I miss you. I love you. Come back to me.” Instead I looked down at the book I was supposed to be reading.